Reiseskildringer

"A mesmerising trip across Central Asia . . . A fascinating travelogue" Financial Times SHORTLISTED FOR EDWARD STANFORD/LONELY PLANET DEBUT TRAVEL WRITER OF THE YEAR 2020 Erika Fatland takes the reader on a journey that is unknown to even the most seasoned globetrotter. The five former Soviet Republics' Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan all became independent when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. How have these countries developed since then? In the Kyrgyzstani villages Erika Fatland meets victims of the widely known tradition of bride snatching; she visits the huge and desolate Polygon in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested explosions of nuclear bombs; she meets Chinese shrimp gatherers on the banks of the dried out Aral Sea and she witnesses the fall of a dictator. She travels incognito through Turkmenistan, a country that is closed to journalists. She meets exhausted human rights activists in Kazakhstan, survivors from the massacre in Osh in 2010, German Menonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago. During her travels, she observes how ancient customs clash with gas production and she witnesses the underlying conflicts between ethnic Russians and the majority in a country that is slowly building its future in Nationalist colours. In these countries, that used to be the furthest border of the Soviet Union, life follows another pace of time. Amidst the treasures of Samarkand and the bleakness of Soviet architecture, Erika Fatland moves with her openness towards the people and the landscapes around her. A rare and unforgettable travelogue.

Forfatter: Erika Fatland
Språk: Englask
Antall sider: 477
publisert: 2014

This volume is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is a collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Croatia, which will give life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the traveller will experience.

• Publisert: 2006
  
• Antall sider: 250
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780907871897

På vandring uten esel i Cevennene er en rik, underholdende og underfundig bok, i dialog med en av litteraturhistoriens største fortellere Rober Louis Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson er kanskje mest kjent som forfatter av klassikerne Skatten på sjørøverøya og Dr. Jekyll og Mr. Hyde. Men han har også skrevet det som i dag regnes som en klassiker i friluftslitteraturen: På vandring med et esel i Cevennene utkom i 1879. I boken, som var en av Stevensons første, reflekterer han over den tolv dager lange turen han gikk gjennom det sørfranske landskapet, menneskene han møtte, og erfaringene han gjorde seg som eseldriver.

I 2017 får Alexander Leborg i oppdrag å oversette Robert Louis Stevensons klassiker På vandring med et esel i Cevennene. Helt siden Leborg leste boken for første gang, har han drømt om å komme til dette landskapet og gå den samme turen. Som ledd i forberedelsene velger han å gå i forfatterens fotspor. Leborg tar selv dagboksnotater underveis. Han er ingen erfaren vandringsmann, men hans betraktninger om livet på landeveien er kloke, entusiastiske og fulle av beundring for turen Stevenson tok nesten 140 år tidligere.

• Forfatter: Alexander Leborg
• Publisert: 2019
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Språk: Norsk bokmål
• ISBN: 9788202608286

For 15 years, award-winning travel writer Stephen McClarence and his BBC Radio journalist wife Clare Jenkins made a series of journeys through India to learn about one of its most eccentric and fast-dwindling communities: the Anglo-Indians. Mainly descendants of British men and Indian women, their combined heritage stretches back 350 years through the times of the East India Company and the British Raj. In Jhansi - a railway hub in the state of Uttar Pradesh and inspiration for John Masters's 1950s book Bhowani Junction - the Anglo-Indian community is reduced to around 30 families.

Teatime at Peggy's shares their stories. Inspired by Jenkins' own Anglo-Indian family connections, the couple immersed themselves in the customs of this little-known dimension to India, soon developing a profound affection for their new friends, particularly for two of the area's most memorable figureheads: the title character 'Aunty Peggy', daughter and widow of railwaymen, overseer of the European cemetery, and 'friend of the great and the good, the rich and the poor'; and Captain Roy Abbott, the last British landowner in India, who never dined without wearing a blazer, cravat and immaculately pressed trousers. The authors spent hours at Peggy's kitchen table - eating cake, samosas and curry; drinking tea; welcoming eccentric characters, like Pastor Rao who could recite Winston Churchill speeches from memory; listening to stories, told in lilting accents, of the Railway Institute and May Queen Balls, Monsoon Toad Balls (where 'the ugliest, most hideous-looking man' would win the prize), waltzes and foxtrots, dancing in the jungle to Victor Silvester gramophone records, games of rummy and housey-housey, and Anglo-Indian cookery that embraced plum cake, goat's brain curry, Mulligatawny soup and crème caramel.

Warm, humorous and evocative, Teatime at Peggy's is a lyrical, loving homage to the Anglo-Indians. Filled with larger-than-life characters and with the ever-present exhilaration of 21st-century India, it is both intimate and revelatory, and a testament to the importance of tradition, community and friendship. This enchanting book is for anyone who knows India well - or who simply yearns to take the 'trip of a lifetime' to the 'sub-continent' and see things a little differently.

• Forfattere: Stephen McClarence og Clare Jenkins
• Publisert: Juni 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692424

Journey through Southern India is a delightfully irreverent yet insightful travel memoir that invites readers to join two wisecracking retirees on an extraordinary three-week odyssey across the dazzling landscapes of southern India. It neatly fills in some of the geographical gaps left after the duo's tour of northern India, described in author Mark Probert's 2021 book, Journey through India (2021). The two British pensioners' latest 'trip of a lifetime' proves to be an unforgettable tour brimming with strange encounters, near-misses and life-affirming moments.

This book's refreshing candour and gentle wit sweep readers into a kaleidoscope of rich experiences. With travels taking in the bustling streets of Mumbai and the serene backwaters of Kerala, ancient temples of Hampi and the modern experimental township of Auroville, the cricket world cup and the world's largest bust, this fast-moving narrative is an immersion into a dazzling world of vibrant colours, exotic aromas and cacophonous soundscapes. From your armchair, you can meet an internationally famous yoga guru, swim in the Arabian Sea and celebrate Diwali in what was once the world's second-largest city, Hampi.

Whether dodging Delhi belly with a thimbleful of Imodium, nearly causing an international incident at the Auroville exhibition centre or finding themselves accidentally stoking political fervour at a Mumbai rally, Mark and his best friend Nick gamely stumble into experiences that would shake travel certainties in even the most daring souls. Yet it is his openness to adventure, self-deprecating humour in the face of chaos and profound appreciation for the diversity of the human spirit that makes Mark such an enchanting and compelling guide on this intercultural exploration of India's intoxicating extremes. Fun yet thoughtful, and written in richly descriptive prose, Journey through Southern India takes readers far beyond a typical tour itinerary to deliver an authentic, amusing and surprisingly moving account of a traveller's quest for perspective, connection and meaning amid the beautiful contradictions of the subcontinent.

This is a perceptive, open-hearted memoir of an unforgettable journey - one that inspires us to live every adventure to its fullest.

• Forfatter: Mark Robert
• Publisert: Desember 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784779863

In A Long Way South, itinerant traveller Sara Stewart relates memories salvaged from her explorations of Latin America during 1974/5, a turbulent, politically unstable period where kidnappings and smuggling were commonplace, where dead bodies lined the roads and where tanks guarded the streets of two capitals following a military coup and insurgency. Posing as the ship captain's niece, Sara crossed the Atlantic in a cargo boat before docking in Veracruz, Mexico. There she followed an Irishman and his pack of hounds as they hunted jackals through desert cacti, then met film makers and fishermen - and fell in love.

Travelling by local buses and trains, she gradually headed south, watching dead bodies pile up in Central American countries and celebrating Christmas in El Salvador, before eventually reaching South America. In Ecuador she rode on a train roof through towering landscapes and encountered tribal people, then travelled by sea to the fabled Galápagos Islands. Once back on the South American mainland, she braved rampant lawlessness in Lima, tanks and troops lining the streets of the Peruvian capital.

In Bolivia she joined a bus full of female smugglers, traversed flooded rivers and survived freezing nights. Tanks also characterised Sara's time in Santiago, the Chilean capital, which had just experienced a military coup that ended democracy and established General Pinochet's long-lasting dictatorship. Continuing southwards, Sara crossed the vastness of Patagonia to endure rough seas on a boat with esteemed author Bruce Chatwin, before venturing across the Andes into Argentina.

The country proved to be out of control, characterised by crazy inflation, political mayhem and kidnappings, and abject poverty contrasting with ostentatious wealth. Reaching Brazil, Sara's journey culminated with marvelling at Iguaçu Falls before unexpectedly partying with notorious Great Train Robber and fugitive Ronnie Biggs near Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema Beach. An authentic recollection of intrepid travels during an era long before travel became straightforward, the memoirs collated in A Long Way South are a thrilling, engaging read - a compendium of tales as much about remarkable people as they are about the diverse, fascinating places and charged political situations that characterised 1970s Latin America.

• Forfatter: Sara Stewart
• Publisert: November 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784779856

Den prisbelønte forfatteren Torbjørn Færøviks mektige fortelling tar oss igjennom Kinas historie. Kina er et skattkammer for historieinteresserte. Landets skrevne historie er mer enn fire tusen år gammel, og det gjøres til stadighet nye interessante arkeologiske funn. I formann Maos styretid fra 1949 til 1976 var Kina et nokså lukket land. De siste tiårene har det åpnet seg mer. Millioner av turister har opplevd keiserpalasset i Beijing, vandret på Den kinesiske muren eller beundret den underjordiske terrakottahæren til landets første keiser, den sagnomsuste Qin Shihuang. Turisters inntrykk blir ofte flyktige, og mange forstår ikke betydningen av det de ser. Derfor er det historiske bakteppet så viktig.

• Forfatter: Torbjørn Færøvik
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Norsk bokmål
• Antall sider: 622
• ISBN: 9788202839383

Norges fremste reiseskildrer har fulgt verdens mest berømte togspor – fra London til Istanbul og videre til Samarkand og leverer sin mest sprudlende bok til nå. En reise gjennom et kontinents historie og kultur, 7500km, 12 land og tre århundre.

• Forfatter: Torbjørn Færøvik
• Publisert: 2017
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Norsk bokmål
• Antall sider: 504
• ISBN: 9788202542764

Meeting Turkish farmers and workers, Syrian refugees and Russians avoiding conscription, the journey brings to life a living, breathing, cultural tapestry of the place where Asia, Africa and Europe converge.

The result is a love letter to a country and its neighbours - one that offers a clear-eyed view of Turkiye and its place in a changing world. Yet the route is also marked by tragedy, as Sayarer cycles along a major fault line just months before one of the most devastating earthquakes in the region's modern history.

Always engaged with the big historical and political questions that inform so much of his writing, Sayarer uses his bicycle and the roadside encounters it allows to bring everything back to the human level. At the end of his journey we are left with a deeper understanding of the country, as well as the essential and universal nature of political power, both in Turkiye and closer to home.

• Forfatter: Julian Emre Sayarer
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
  
• Språk: Engelsk
• Antall sider: 256
• ISBN: 9781529429961

Hemingway's early stories told in his distinctive style. 'When she goes, he thought, I'll have all I want'.

Not all I want but all there is. In these early Hemingway stories, which are partly autobiographical, men and women of passion live, fight, love and die in scenes of dramatic intensity. They range from haunting tragedy on the snow-capped peak of Kilimanjaro, to brutal America with its deceptive calm, and war-ravaged Europe.

• Forfatter: Ernest Hemmingway
• Publisert: 2004
• Antall sider: 138
• Språk: Engelsk
• Innbinding: Heftet
• ISBN: 9780099460923
  

One of the greatest pieces of travel and nature writing ever written. Go with Peter Matthiessen all the way to Dolpo, a Tibetan plateau in the high Himalayas. This is the account of a journey to the dazzling Tibetan plateau of Dolpo in the high Himalayas.

In 1973 Matthiessen made the 250-mile trek to Dolpo, as part of an expedition to study wild blue sheep. It was an arduous, sometimes dangerous, physical endeavour: exertion, blisters, blizzards, endless negotiations with sherpas, quaking cold. But it was also a 'journey of the heart' - amongst the beauty and indifference of the mountains Matthiessen was searching for solace.

• Forfatter: Peter Matthiessen
• Publisert: 1998
• Antall sider: 312
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099771111
  
  

One of the first things I was told when I arrived in Kabul was never to walk... When journalist Taran Khan arrives in Kabul, she uncovers a place that defies her expectations. Her wanderings with other Kabulis reveal a fragile city in a state of flux: stricken by near-constant war, but flickering with the promise of peace; governed by age-old codes but experimenting with new modes of living.

Her walks take her to the unvisited tombs of the dead, and to the land of the living - like the booksellers, archaeologists, film-makers and entrepreneurs who are remaking this 3,000-year-old city. And as NATO troops begin to withdraw from the country, Khan watches the cycle of transformation begin again. 

• Forfatter: Taran N. Khan
• Publisert: 2021
• Antall sider: 272
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784708023
  

Between 1970 and 1975 Jon Swain, the English journalist portrayed in David Puttnam's film, The Killing Fields, lived in the lands of the Mekong river. This is his account of those years, and the way in which the tumultuous events affected his perceptions of life and death as Europe never could. He also describes the beauty of the Mekong landscape - the villages along its banks, surrounded by mangoes, bananas and coconuts, and the exquisite women, the odours of opium, and the region's other face - that of violence and corruption.

Forfattere: Jon Swain
Publisert: 1996
ISBN: 9780749320201
Sider nr: 304

Bruce Chatwin sets off on a journey through South America in this wistful classic travel book with its unique, roving structure and beautiful descriptions, In Patagonia offers an original take on the age-old adventure tale. Bruce Chatwin’s journey to a remote country in search of a strange beast brings along with it a cast of fascinating characters. Their stories delay him on the road, but will have you tearing through to the book’s end.

• Forfatter: Bruce Chatwin
• Publisert: 1998
• Antall sider: 260
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099769514
  

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev. SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020

With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides – Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others – Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news – a Russia of humanity and daily struggles.

At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the 'ordinary' people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today.

• Forfatter: Sara Wheeler
• Publisert: 2020
  
• Antall sider: 304
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099584131 

A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Many years later she tells her story from a hotel in New York, opening a window into an extraordinary half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation and summoning up a quarter of a century of Japan's dramatic history.

• Forfatter: Arthur Golden
• Publisert: 1998
  
• Antall sider: 512
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780099771517

In this fascinating journey Claudio Magris, whose knowledge is encyclopaedic and whose curiosity limitless, guides his reader from the source of the Danube in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea. Along the way he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments - from Ovid to Kafka and Canetti - and in so doing sets his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the vital crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, of Christendom and Islam.

• Forfatter: Claudio Magris
• Publisert: 2016
• Antall sider: 416
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781784871314
  

An awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth, from the author of international bestseller The Eight Mountains, Paolo Cognetti marked his 40th birthday with a journey he had always wanted to make: to Dolpo, a remote Himalayan region where Nepal meets Tibet. He took with him two friends, a notebook, mules and guides, and a well-worn copy of The Snow Leopard. Written in 1978, Matthiessen's classic was also turning forty, and Cognetti set out to walk in the footsteps of the great adventurer.

Without Ever Reaching the Summit combines travel journal, secular pilgrimage, literary homage and sublime mountain writing in a short book for readers of Macfarlane, Rebanks and Cognetti's own bestseller, The Eight Mountains. An investigation into the author's physical limits, an ancient mountain culture, and the magnificence of nature, it is an awestruck love letter to one of the most spectacular places on earth.

• Forfatter: Paolo Cognetti
• Publisert: Juni 2024
• Antall sider: 160
• ISBN: 9781529925432

As a child, award-winning travel writer Stanley Stewart dreamed of crossing Mongolia on horseback. This is the story of how that dream was fulfilled by following in the footsteps of a 13th-century Franciscan friar. Eight centuries ago the Mongols burst forth from Central Asia in a series of spectacular conquests that took them from the Danube to the Yellow Sea.

Their empire was seen as the final triumph of the nomadic ‘barbarians’. But in time the Mongols sank back into the obscurity from which they had emerged, almost without trace. Remote and outlandish, Outer Mongolia became a metaphor for exile, a lost domain of tents and horsemen, little changed since the days of Genghis Khan.

In this remarkable book, Stanley Stewart sets off in the wake of an obscure 13th century Franciscan friar on a pilgimage across the old empire, from Istanbul to the distant homeland of the Mongol Hordes. The heart of his odyssey is a thousand-mile ride on horseback, among nomads for whom travel is a way of life, through a trackless land governed by winds and patterns of migration. On a journey full of bizarre characters and unexpected encounters, he crosses the desert and mountains of Central Asia, battles through the High Altay and the fringes of the Gobi, to the wind-swept grasslands of the steppes and the birthplace of Genghis Khan.

Vivid, hilarious, and compelling, this eagerly-awaited book will take its place among travel classics – a thrilling tale of adventure, a comic masterpiece, an evocative portrait of a medieval land marooned in the modern world.

• Publisert: 2021
  
• Antall sider: 265
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9780006530275

After eight years living in Copenhagen, an English journalist, driven by a passion for languages and mountains, finally rebels. With little more than an assortment of Earl Grey teabags, Danish candles and a map, Georgina Howard abandons her all-too-cosy, cinnamon-scented lifestyle and drives south. The journey leads to wild and craggy landscapes in the Basque Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border, where place names are written in a bizarre, foreign tongue full of 'x's and 'z's.

Losing her heart to this beautiful land and her pride to the inscrutability of the language, Howard moves into an isolated barn in a mountain hamlet. While pagan festivals reverberate through the valleys, her Basque neighbours - farmers, shepherds, a gravedigger and a champion female lumberjack - observe her, bemused. Only when her daughter, Marion, is born - after an unsuccessful relationship with an eccentric Basque miller - do Howard's neighbours drop their reserve and welcome her into their homes.

Taking Marion's upbringing upon themselves, they fatten her up on spicy Basque sausages and black bean stews, teach her Basque nursery rhymes and train her to milk sheep. Meanwhile, Howard converts a barn into the headquarters of an international business providing walking, culture and language tours. Resigned to the ineptitude of their new neighbour, with patience and amusement, the locals tow her car out of ditches and teach her how to stack wood, catch mice, unblock septic tanks and drink wine from a leather gourd.

In the Footsteps of Smugglers follows the adventures of an outsider: a single mother, linguist, cosmopolitan nomad and cultural chameleon who paradoxically makes her home among an indigenous people deeply rooted in their land, with a language and culture dating back to Stone-Age times. Unwittingly, she repays their hospitality by luring anti-terrorist squads, blackmailers and spies into their midst as the dramatic past of the Basque Country proves to have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. An inspiring, humorous travel memoir, Bradt's In the Footsteps of Smugglers weaves behind-the-scenes vignettes of daily rural life and historical research to produce authentic insights on all things Basque, threaded with a rhapsody on the theme of identity.

• Forfatter: Georgina Howard
• Publisert: Jul. 2024
• Innbinding: Heftet
• Språk: Engelsk
• ISBN: 9781804692110

Taking the Risk is Hilary Bradt's engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trail-blazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters. and success.

From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset. Barely into her twenties, Hilary Bradt thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 Hilary explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes.

The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook. From 1977 the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides. This was just as well, because Hilary's career in occupational therapy ended when potential employers noticed that time taken off for travel exceeded periods of employment.

During the 1980s, Bradt Guides grew and became successful - but that didn't stop Hilary travelling, including as a tour leader. Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilary's lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher.

Laugh (or cry) at Hilary's ability to court media disasters while seeking the limelight, including waving around condoms on BBC TV. Taking the Risk comprises the collected stories of an inveterate, intrepid traveller whose joyous exploration of the world has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people - anyone who has owned a Bradt Guide. A unique book from a unique individual, it will delight anyone who has ever travelled or ever wondered what goes into making the books we read.

• Forfatter: Hilary Bradt
• Publisert: 2024
• Innbinding: Innbundet
• Antall sider: 320
• ISBN: 9781804691847